1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document editing system and a method of preparing a tag information management table for use in editing a document.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the case of a commonly known markup language, such as HTML or XML, when an arbitrary, non-empty document area within a target document is specified, markup indicating a start position is inserted at the start position of the document area, and markup indicating an end position is inserted at the end position of the document area. In the following description, a symbol which acts to insert at an arbitrary position within a document is called a “tag.” A document area located between a start tag for specifying the start position of a document area desired to be specified and an end tag for specifying an end position is identified as a specified document area by a processor capable of understanding the markup language used for describing the document. The start tag and the end tag are of the same type and are paired up with each other.
In a case where a document area specified by a paired start and end tag is nested into another document area specified by a paired start and end tag of the same type or where one document area partially overlaps another document area, a processor capable of comprehending a commonly known markup language used for the document cannot uniquely distinguish which end tag is paired up with a given start tag, and therefore the processor cannot distinguish the document areas specified by the corresponding paired tags.
Thus, the background technology poses a problem of incapability of distinguishing, a plurality of document areas which are nested or which partially overlap and are specified through use of tags of the same type. Such a limitation imposed on the background technology may be translated into a problem of a low degree of freedom in adding attributes to a document through use of tags.